Morphological effects in children's spelling of French words

The present study examined whether primary school children represent morpho logical information when spelling French words that have silent-consonant e ndings (e.g., chat). Children in grades 2 (n = 57) and 4 (n = 55) spelled r egular, morphological, and deep words. The morphological and deep words dif fered in the presence or absence of derivatives that revealed the nature of the silent-consonant ending. As expected, regular words were the easiest t o spell whereas morphological words (for which the silent consonant could b e derived) were easier to spell than were deep words (for which the silent consonant must be memorized). Children's linguistic knowledge of morphology made a contribution to their spelling of morphological words that was inde pendent of reading experience, vocabulary, spelling ability (i.e., spelling regular words), and phoneme awareness.